Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / How To Build A Brand That Lasts: with Lew Frankfort (Chairman + Former CEO of Coach)

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How To Build A Brand That Lasts: with Lew Frankfort (Chairman + Former CEO of Coach) · QUESTION EVERYTHING

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Danielle Robe, and each week my guests and I come
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: And who says?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: So? Come curious, dig deep, and join the conversation. It's
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: time to question everything.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Hello.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Hello, I hope you're having a beautiful day and a
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: really great lead up to Thanksgiving. I am in Portover
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: to Mexico with my entire mom's side of the family.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: So my last living grandmother.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: My Oma, who I think you guys have probably heard
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: me talk about. She is turning ninety and she wanted
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: everybody to be together. So we are all at an
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: all inclusive in Mexico together for Thanksgiving week and next
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: week I'll report back. You know, I'm not sure we'll
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: ever get the opportunity to do this again, so I'm
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: taking it all in. But it's funny having cousins and
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: aunts and uncles and everybody from all over the country
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: who aren't always together together at one dinner table every
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: single night.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: It's been interesting and fun.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Also, you've probably noticed that there's some ads at the
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: beginning of the show and in the middle of the show,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: and here's what that's all about.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: For a long time, we didn't have ads.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And the pod is officially part of the iHeartMedia podcast family.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: iHeartMedia is the largest podcast.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Network in the entire world, and I am really excited.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: To be in partnership with them.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: This has been just a long time building and coming,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and so I'm gonna be honest with you. I know
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: ads can be a little bit annoying, and I thought
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: about that long and hard. But here's what my sort
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: of analysis was. I have to recoup some money from
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the podcast. So my analysis was, it's better that they
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: pay us for ads than ask you to pay for
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the podcast. Right.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: I figured you'd be on board with that. I just
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I don't want to charge for the podcast.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I love like I just believe in free information and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I want to connect with as many of you as possible.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: So that's what that's about. And thanks for growing with me.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes on emails I'll sign off when I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: feel it we grow together, and I really believe that deeply,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I hope that I add to your life, and you
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: add so much to my life, and so thank you
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: for growing together, for growing with me. So I always
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: think that Thanksgiving puts people in a reflective mood, right
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: like I'm sure you go around the table with your
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: family and ask what everybody's grateful for, or think about
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: it at least. And so I felt like dropping of
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: values driven episode right before the holiday gives gives everyone,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: including me, something to carry into the holiday. And our
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: guest today lives his life by his values.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Truly.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Let me explain, every generation has a few people who
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: remind us that progress doesn't start with power.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: It starts with perspective.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: People who see the world just a few degrees differently,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and in doing so, shift the entire horizon for the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: rest of us. Some of them are household names. Okrah
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Winfrey turned rejection into a media empire. Steve Jobs transformed
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: of firing into a new way of imagining the future.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Sarah Blakely reinvented an entire industry with five.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Thousand dollars in a wild idea. Madam C. J. Walker,
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: who rose.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: From impossibly hard beginnings to become America's first female self
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: made millionaire.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: And then there are quieter innovators too.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Hiroshi Iwatani, a Japanese engineer who felt like he'd failed
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: as a musician.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: So what did he do.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: He built something for people who were afraid to sing,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the karaoke machine, and he changed how the world experiences
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: nightlife and entertainment and joy. So what ties these people together, Well,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: it's not their resumes. It's that they were brave enough
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: to notice what others overlooked, and they were generous enough
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: to build something better.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: That's the lineage.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Today's guest belongs to Lou Frankfurt, the former CEO of Coach.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Didn't start out imagining he'd reshape American fashion. He began
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: as a kid from the Bronx, the son of a
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: police officer, finding his voice through a speech impediment, learning
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: early that strength doesn't always look like certainty. Sometimes it
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: looks like listening, and sometimes it looks like curiosity. U
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: memoir Bagman traces a path from public service to the
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: corner office, from leather samples to building one of the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: most recognizable brands.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: On the planet.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: But what makes Lou's story resonate is not just the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: scale of his success.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: It is the clarity of his values.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: So I had the north star, which was to really
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: build a microcosm of the best of America in the
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: bag and accessories that would represent the values of us
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: as Americans.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: He coined the term accessible luxury, which is a concept
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: that didn't just describe a brand, but it redefined an
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: entire category of fashion.
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: You need to be able to have bold imagination and
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: think that you could create something that perhaps did not exist.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: His book is really good. It's really not a business memoir.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Sure there's business in it or business stories in it,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: but Lou was courageous enough to share the high highs
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: and the deeply personal lows. And as I sat across
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: from him interviewing him, I just kept thinking, what an iconoclast.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: He's such a striver.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: He built the first American luxury bag brand, and he
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: did it with so much integrity.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: So obviously I had a ton of questions.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: But the one I keep coming back to, and the
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: one I had when I was reading his book, the
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: one that we're circling today is how do you lead
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: with values in a culture that rewards shortcuts? And I
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: guess I'll throw one more in there. What does integrity
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: look like In an age where everything is a moment,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: it's time to question everything with Lou Frankfurt. So, Lou,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the title of your book bag Man. I love the cover,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: by the way, thank you, But bag Man is a
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: nod to your career at Coach. Of course, you notably
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: took the company from a six million dollar family run
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: leather goods maker to a five billion dollar publicly traded
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: brand known worldwide. But there's a little humility and satire
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: in the title of this book. The bag man is
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: like kind of known as the unglamorous but essential, like
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the operator, the errand guy I wouldn't call the guy
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: running the show bag man.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Can you tell me?
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you ran through so many titles. Why did
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: you land on bagman? What does it mean to you?
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Well? I do consider myself a bag man because I
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: built vessels for people to put their things in. And
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: I was once given the bag with a lot of
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: cash from a manufacturer in Italy who thought on that
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: when we mistakenly paid him twice for a shipment of goods,
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: that the second was a payment that he would give
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: me when I came. So I handed him back the
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: bag and there was a brown bag folded with cash
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: or one hundred dollar bills, and I said to him,
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: we will take thirty eight thousand dollars off the next invoice.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: But bag Man I wanted again as a brand guy,
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: I wanted to have a title that would be intrusive
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: and also a title that would be compelling. So bag
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: Man gets people's attention because of the double meaning. And
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: I did sell a lot of bags in my life.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: And the second is because I thought it would be compelling,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: that it would draw someone in out of curiosity, and
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: it's I really loved the title. It came pretty naturally
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: to me that I am the Bagman. A few people
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: in the course of my career have called me the
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: bag Man.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Was there a runner up or you always knew it
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: was going to be called Bagman?
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: I think from the very beginning I settled on bag Man.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's something deeply American about it to me, Like
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: you're saying, I'm not this Wall Street guy and I'm
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: a kid from the Bronx.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not a Wall Street guy. And when we
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: talk about building a brand, we talk about selling one
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: product at a time to one consumer and hoping that
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: they really enjoy the product, appreciated. My story in many
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: ways is American story. You're right, and I am living
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: the American dream, and I'm thankful that I've had this opportunity.
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: And we don't have a history of luxury brands in
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: the United States. And shortly after I joined Coach, I
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: developed a perspective that Coach could be the best of America.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: That it's earnest, it's hard working, and I thought to
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: myself that if we built the right culture and a
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: right product and a consistent the modeling of of treating
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: consumers as if they're guests in our house, that we
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: might be able to build something special.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: When you say the word ernest, I'm curious about that
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: because I think there's like this this feeling that earnestness
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: is cringey nowadays. I've always considered myself an earnest person,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and I don't know that I fit into like a
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: millennial or gen Z ideal because of that quality.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: You're not srue, I'm not in I understand when I
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: use the word earnest that I use it in its
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: most basic form. When you're earnest, you're authentic, you're real,
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: You're not putting on as you're not pretending what you
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: sees what you get and when you go back, when
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: I go back to the basic Coach original bags from
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: the sixties and seventies and eighties, it's a hard working bag.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: It less for generations. And today you can go on
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: eBay and pay one thousand dollars for a big that
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: we may have made and sold for seventy dollars thirty
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: five forty years ago, because it's still real and you
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: can continue to get great use out.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Of it, and it's sturdy, sturdy.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Now, I was reading that you had a speech impediment
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: when you were a kid, and I can imagine that
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: as a kid, struggling to get words out might make
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: you feel small. Did you see reverberations from that as
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you entered the workforce.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: The short answer is I did not see reverberations. I
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: became very conscious and I'm still conscious that I can't
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: say OZ very well, and I sort of work around it.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: But growing up with a speech impediment when I was
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: a little kid, it was tough.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It's sort of interesting because you've built an empire in
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: many ways based on your voice and your point of view.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: It's hard for me to call it an empire because
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: I believe we it's a community. If you look at
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Coach today and you look at the leadership and the employees,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: they all have belief in the brand. They have belief
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: that we're giving consumers a product that's a great value,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: a lasting product, and we do treat consumers customers as
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: if the guests in our home. And the culture is
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: a very affirmative culture.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I grew up with a brother who had a speech
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: impediment as a kid, and I saw him push through it.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: There was so much perseverance required. And I was reading
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: that I think forty percent of CEOs have dyslexia. There's
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: something about the perseverance or the relentlessness that's required as
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: a kid that must translate somehow it sounds right.
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: I didn't really feel that way by the time I
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: was in the fifty sixth grade, so ten or eleven
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: people buy and large could understand me. It was a
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: real issue though when I was a young child, and
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: it caused a lot of embarrassing moments for me.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: I love reading about how a diaper bag informed it
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: was kind of your first connection to a bag.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Will you share that story?
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Sure? My wife of fifty years Bobby, who was teaching
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: at Brooklyn College and very involved in higher education and
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: also on working with disadvantage children in the community, decided
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: after the birth of our first child that she was
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: going to create a bag that would fit on a
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: stroller as well as be carried over your shoulder. And
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: fortunately she did have an aunt in Texas who made bags,
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: and she developed a bag business, and I watched it
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: grow and I watched it thrive, and that was my
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: first real experience, even remotely. And I would say in
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: building something, did.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: You take anything that you learned watching her over to
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: coach when you started after you, because you worked in
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the government for ten years and then you went over
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: to coach.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I was in government. I would occasionally go with her
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: to make a sales call because she would do calls
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: on Saturdays and or Sundays, even certain stores that were open.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: And she sold largely the specialty stores, and I really
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: learned the pitch, so to speak. And learning the pitch
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: when you sell a specialty stores, which were really a
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: very major shopping channel, is really understanding the DNA of
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: the founder of the owner, what motivates them, trying to
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: understand who is the customer within the store, how do
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: you service them? How do you make an argument that's
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: convinced and compelling that your product is distinctive from others
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: so that they're willing to put it on the shelves.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: So, speaking of that, we share a big value of curiosity.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: I loved reading about that in your book. You ask
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: the question, who is the Coach customer and how do
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I reach them? How does somebody figure out who their
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: customer is?
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: It's a combination of magic and logic, which is a
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: term that is used throughout my memoir and it's a
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: convention that Coach. When I run into people at Coach today,
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: they tell me that a day doesn't go past when
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: someone doesn't say we need more magic or we need
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: more logic. So immersive curiosity, I believe is magic. It's
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: not logic because there isn't a playbook. You need to
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: have an open mind with a method of inquiry that
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: allows you to go left, right, pivot, go up and
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: down depending on what you hear. And with immersive curiosity,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: it's really insatiable. And I know that you're a very
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: curious person and that has led on you to move
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: in different directions. Also, from a career perspective. So the
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: magic is a really is boundless curiosity. It's trying to
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: grock something to really get to the essence of it. Now,
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: the logic is using data and analytics to measure behavior,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: to measure attitude, and we did that from the beginning.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Do you think that coming into Coach as an outsider,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: coming from government, not having worked in fashion. You said
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: when you got there, didn't even really care about fashion.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: You were looking at data and that's how you made choices.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Do you think coming in as an outsider helped.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: It depends on the industry, the company, and the place
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: where you come in. So I came in as a
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: protege of the founder, and he actually appreciated that I
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: did not have a fashion background because he didn't really
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: believe in fashion. He believed in a great product interesting,
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: so product was hero. The word fashion was prohibited from
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: discussing it. He made a great, great product that attracted
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: a subset of the American public, classic consumers, functional consumers.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: And when I joined Coach it was actually at a
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: time when European luxury brands had only a small press
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: in the United States and in accessories and bags and
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Coach occupied a single lane between mass and luxury, and
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: I thought to myself, with the growing middle class, that
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: we would be able to create, perhaps one day a highway.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: And it turned out to be a super highway between
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: mass and luxury. And I originally called a democratized luxury. However,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: when we went public, we needed to find a moniker
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: that investors who are primarily male and understand why we
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: do invest in a bad company, and we created the
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: term accessible luxury.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Now I've only gotten to spend maybe thirty minutes total
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: with you so far in my life, and I can
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: tell that you are a person who goes out of
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: their way to make other people feel seen. You are
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: maybe a unique mix of magic and logic. And I'm
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: wondering if over the course of your time at Coach
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: you ever wanted to override the logic part. Did you
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: ever make decisions based on the magic if the data
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: said something else?
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: Okay, See, when you build something, you really need to
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: start with magic, not logic. So you need to start
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: with belief and possibilities. You need to be able to
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: have bold imagination and think that you could create something
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: that perhaps did not exist, whether it's either and a
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: clear need, or you believe that you could demonstrate something
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: where consumers would come to understand that they were missing something.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: So I do believe. On the magic side, you need
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: to have belief. I fell in love with a coach bag,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: and I really felt it was everything that an advocate
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: of the bag would want it to be. It was sturdy,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: it was reliable, it did the job, It got better
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: over time, and as you well know as a bags
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: are really one of the most important products that a
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: woman carries. She opens it thirty fifty sixty times a day,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: she has her essentials in it. Depending on the nature
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: of the bag, it could have organization, It could have zippers.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: For the person who is more casual, she can dump
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: everything in the bag. So I had a notion that
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: we could build something. So you need bold imagination and
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: you need belief. If you don't start with the purpose,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: you can never actually get to a place. So I
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: had a north star, which was to really build a
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: microcosm of the best of America in the bag, in
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: accessories that would represent the value of us as Americans.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: It's interesting for me to hear that you wanted to
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: build the best of America in a bag. That's such
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: a huge thing to say. How did you even come.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Up with that?
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: I was always value driven. So when I was in
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: city government, my most significant role was running daycare and
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Headstart during a very tough period in the mid seventies
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: when the city was going through a fiscal crisis, and
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: I felt at the time almost messianic about my responsibility
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: to ensure that every eligible child and family would be
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: able to get daycare and head start services. So I
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: felt when I was in government that I was in
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: service of my client. So when I went to Coach,
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: I naturally gravitated to the customer because I didn't really
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: know anything else to do. And it seemed to work
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: if you really focus on your customer. And our customer
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: loved Coach and when I joined. Prior to my joining Coach,
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: as an example, I pretended to be a freelance Business
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: Week reporter and I interviewed buyers and merchants from different Bloomingdale's.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: I remember Macy's, Bondwit Teller and a small handbag specialty
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: store on West seventy second Street in New York City,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: and this owner said to me, it has a cult
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: following and being a product of the sixties and having
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: a vision in the sixties that my generation would be
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: able to help create a better world. It was easy
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: for me to put the dots together and say, Okay,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: I'm in business, but I feel purposeful. And when I
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: looked at our workforce, it was a melting pot, a
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: microco America, and that made me feel ready, proud and good.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: So the number that keeps coming up in all of
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: these interviews is the five billion dollar number.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: You did an interview with Gary Vee and he was like,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: say it again, repeat it.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: So six million dollars to five billion through your time
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: with the brand, it's roughly an eight hundred and thirty
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: three x growth in revenue. And just for a reference,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I had to look it up. Basically, only Starbucks, Amazon, Lululemon,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: and Ralph Lauren have had growth at that level at
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: some point. What were the hitting costs of growth of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: that kind?
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Well, as I said when I spoke with Gary, it
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: didn't occur overnight, So let's it took thirty five years.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: So and whenever we reached a milestone. Because I always
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: was motivated by a drive for excellence and a concurrent
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: fear of failure, never get complacence. When we reached a plateau.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: I remember when we reached seventy five million dollars. I
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: think that was around nineteen eighty seven eighty six, we
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: gave everyone a turkey for Thanksgiving, every factory worker, every
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: office worker. We had small celebrations as we went forward.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: But when we talk about hidden course to really build
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: a brand that is beloved, which requires innovation, relevance, continual adaptation,
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: it's twenty four to seven. So it took a toll
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: on my body. It took a toll on my mind.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: It forced me to make difficult choices in terms of
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: working versus being with family. And I learned as early
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: as the nineteen eighties that I really needed to listen
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: to my body, meaning if I had back aches, or
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: I was feeling like I was an impostor one day
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: just sitting there, do I really know enough to do this?
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: Or losing my mojo, or being in a situation where
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: I had little control and the meant a lot to me.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: These fears and worries lack of sleep manifest physically, and
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: when they manifest physically, you need to pause and pay attention.
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: And I started to develop a variety of techniques that
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: I used through today to help me navigate away from
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: depressive episodes and not allow myself to go into a
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: bad place. And of course there's pattern recognition, but I
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: do strongly believe that you need balance and exercise is
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: one you need. Releases. Meditation is a wonderful way to
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: give your mind a break and put it on pause,
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: whether it's for ten or twenty minutes. I massage therapy
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: from the right therapists who really understand how energy flows
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: in your body, it can really make a difference. I'm
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: a strong believer in executive coaching, therapy and the use
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: of meds when necessary, and I encourage people of all
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: ages to really be honest with themselves.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: You mentioned that your fear of failure. You said you
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: were driven by excellence and failure.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: And it's still there.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: I will say, really, to this day, I still.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Have failure dreams. Now they take differents than they ditch
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: twenty and forty years ago.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: So just so everybody who hasn't read the book knows
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you have these failure dreams that are recurring in your life.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Can you explain what they are?
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: These are dreams where I wake up remembering snippets and
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: they generally, like most failure dreams that people have, from
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: what they tell me, they are similar themes. And in
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: my case, it's everything from not being prepared for an
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: exam in college, never attending the class, going in and
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: winging it. When I was a coach, one of the
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: recurring failure dreams I had was not being really prepared.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: So preparation is really key. And one particular dream, which
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: I discuss is in my memoir is the it doesn't
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: This particular dream doesn't occur any longer. But the dream
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: has me walking down Madison Avenue. I'm walking down Madison
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: Avenue in my uniform and at the time it was
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: a three PCE suit. This is the year two thousand
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: and Coaches now liberated from Sarah Lee, which was a
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: holding company that I helped the founder identify, which became
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: my employer for fifteen years, and we were finally on
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: our own. I'm walking down the street. It's eight am.
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: I'm about to go into a meeting with prospective investors.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: And I look down at my feet and I'm not
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: wearing any shoes, and I have blue wooly socks and
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: people are walking past me. No one's looking at my feet.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: But I'm saying, oh my god, how am I going
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: to convince anyone to invest in the company where I'm CEO,
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: where I don't even have shoes in them, not even
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: wearing the right color socks. So I stop at a store.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: There was a shoe store on forty fourth and Madison.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: I see someone inside, someone who's cleaning, and I knock
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: on a window and he goes like this. I lift
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: my foot and he just shrugs, and whether I do,
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: I say, well, I got to go forward. So I
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: walked into the building. It has one of these turnstile,
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: and not turnstile, it has one of these revolving doors.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: And I wake up and I'm soaked my clothes and
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: whatever I'm sleeping is soaked, my pillowcase. Like no different
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: than most people who have failure dreams. You wake up nervous,
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: you wake up on sweating, and I still have those
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: dreams of but they of course have different forms.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: So I mean, you've done years of therapy. Have you
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: figured out the root of where these come from?
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: It's a great question. I haven't really worked extensively with
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: Freudian therapist, although I've read some and it goes back
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: to my early childhood. I'm told to my speech impediment
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: to what you were saying about your brother, that I
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: needed to overcome adversity. And I lived in constant fear,
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: and when I overcame it, I was now longer conscious
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: of it. But it was in my DNA.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: When you started finding big financial success public success with Coach,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: did you feel weird about people treating you differently? Because
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: there's a quality in your book that is so obvious,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: which is great humility.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: Many people that I worked with when Coach was a
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: division of Sarah Le, who were CEO and sometimes founders
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: of their own public companies, had little interest in Lou Frankfort.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: When Coach became more successful in a public company, suddenly
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: they had more interest in me. Yeah, I did not
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: have any interest in them. And I've been asked, actually
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: by Gary about my values, and I had not reflected
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: on the exact question he asked me until that Sunday evening,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: which was how have you changed? I feel I'm fundamentally
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: the same person I was forty or fifty years ago.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: I still believe in the American dream. I'm thankful for
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: everything I have. I'm terribly worried about our country and
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: what it's going through and what it means for my children,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: my grandchildren and their children.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you about that. There's a few
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: people who blurbed your book. Scott Galloway's one of them.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: And I was listening to his podcasts recently and it
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: was right after Jimmy Kimmel had been pulled off air unexpectedly,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: and he said, Bob Iiger. I'm paraphrasing, but he said,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Bob Iger is going to have to make a hard choice.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Is he going to do what's right by his shareholders
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: or is he going to do what's right by America?
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: And I look at so many business leaders in America
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: and I think they have a very similar hard choice
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: to make. Our values are more intertwined in politics now
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: than ever.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, what do you.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Think of things like that?
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And what is someone like me who's not in business
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: in that way not understand about making those choices?
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: First, it's not easy if you're in a bob Ey
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: your type of situation. You have multiple constituencies. You know,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: you have your shareholders, you have your customers, you have
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: your employees, you have your community, and you need to
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: really weigh on a relative absolute basis where you place
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: your values most and I do believe there's been way
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: too much compromise subordination of values in a way that
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: doesn't reflect well on many people or on the many
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: large companies, many of the companies that are backbones of America.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: It seems to me like it's decisions made for short
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: term gain, because when I think about people like Bob
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: like legacy must come into play for him. That's why
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: I think part of the reason he went back to Disney.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: And if you don't make a value driven decision, how
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: can you think about legacy.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: I think most people who don't make a value based
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: decision rationalize it very well, and generally they have their
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: posseas around them that we.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Force it well said.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: And I generally believe that one of one of the
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: things that successful leaders do, and certainly Bob Iger's on
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: the top of of many lists, is they're able to
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: hold antithetical views in their mind at the same time
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: and make choices between them, and in looking at different choices,
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: values do come into play. It's when you're a public
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: company sometimes it's very hard not to look at the
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: short term because you get a report card every three
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: months or every day when you make an announcement, And.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Do you think you were able to obfiscate that because
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Coach was on it? Well, you had Sarah Lee at.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: One point, well, when Sarah Lee was my employer, and
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: they want to me to make decisions that I felt
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: were not in the interests of the Coach brand or company,
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: I declined to do it. So when they wanted me
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: to sell JC Pennies in order to get another Haines
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: hosiery into a much more dominant place, I said, our
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: customer doesn't go there. It's going to take away from
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: the imagery of our brand. And I declined to do it,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: And of course they had the option of letting me go,
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: but they were just angry.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned dark periods earlier and how you navigated
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: depressive episodes. Do you think success comes because of those
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: lows or in spite of them?
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: I think if you can avoid the lows, if you're
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: constituted in a different way, and if you can see
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: warning signals, and much better off than going into a
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: low place and having to lift up, because that takes time, effort,
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: modification of a lot of things you do. And I
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: don't think you need to have depressive episodes to be successful.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: I will say that my fear of failure and drive
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: for excellence always motivated me. And typically when I went
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: into a dark place, it was because I felt I
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: was failing or I felt I wasn't I didn't have
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: enough control over something that was important to me. And
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: I don't do well in situations where I feel that
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: I'm watching something occur and I'm not able to influence
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: or control the outcome and it's important to me. I
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: think that's a human condition that many people have.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: I thought it was really cool in the book how
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: you didn't just share how you did something, how you
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: accomplish something. You sh shared how it felt to do it.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: And I think that's rare in a business memoir. Memoir
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: is one of my favorite genres of books, and I
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: read a lot of them, and I think in the
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: nineties and even early two thousands, there was this business
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: memoir that was very intense. It felt like punctuated and
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: tough and gritty and here's how you push through and
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: get it done. And I think we're in this new
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: phase of business memoirs that I've seen where people are
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: talking about the personal impact of running such a huge business.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Why was it important for you to share the personal
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: part of the professional.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: I wanted to tell an authentic, true story. I don't
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: say earnest, yes, ernest. I wanted to gritty tell a
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: story that I felt would resonate with readers. And I
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: also thought telling a story about building a great brand
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: in and of itself is a very good story. But
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: to add what it took and how I felt would resonate,
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: particularly with Coach employees, many of them are gen z
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: and most of the rest are millennials. It would resonate
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: with Coach fans. It might even resonate with people not
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: connected to Coach. And my children actually urged me to
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: tell a real story because they lived through my ups
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: and downs, and while I shared them with a handful
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: of other people, I was not public about it. Since
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: I've retired from Coach, I've been working with founders and
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: senior teams in early stage businesses, and there I'm very
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: focused on their total self and that does include mental health.
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: And I'm coach in excuse the no pun intended, but
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: I coach people to really look for balance. Enough I
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: see if I see people going into a place where
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: I'm they may be losing their confidence or feeling uncertain
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: I might I would stop in one on one, I
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: would probe them what's going on and if I in
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: Most people, particularly younger people, are very honest about their
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: ambivalence about things, and I tell them you're not alone.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: Life is not a ball of cherries, even if you
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: make it to what appears to be the top.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: Was there a moment at work over the last thirty
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: five years that you think crystallized your values or showcased
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: who lou Frankfurt was.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: In the first part of the year two thousand, when
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: we were going public and we were going to have
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: actual Coach shares, I pushed Sarah Lee to allow me
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: to give stock awards to every single employee in the company,
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: including factory employees. And part of my motivation has to
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: do with what I really believe in is in America,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: which is I have an egalitarian view. I believe in
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: a meritocracy. I believe everyone should participate. And Coach was,
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: as I'm told, the first American brand to provide also
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: annual stock awards all the way down to store managers
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: and below, and that continues through today. And giving ownership,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: real ownership to people who actually operate a store, who
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: are and I think of a store in the old
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: fashioned world. You go into a store, they're shopkeepers. And yes,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: they may be part of a national brand, and yes
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: there may be guidelines for visual merchandising, but they run
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: an ecosystem and we wanted them to participate in whatever
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: wealth accumulation would occur. And I'll just go one step further.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: One of my favorite treats is when I as a CEO,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: when I would travel around the world and I would
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: meet store managers and sales associates and others who would
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: tell me how coach changed their lives. They were able
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: to buy a house, get rid of a mortgage, go
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: through a rough economic periods, and a child to a
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: private school or camp. And that meant as much to
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: me as anything else.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty amazing when a company or a culture
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: that you create, like the gifts are so far reaching.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: There seems to be this I guess one of the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: things I'm struck by is your love of the brand,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: because you just don't see people nowadays align themselves with
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: their companies, with their work the way that maybe in
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: the fifties I would read about I think young people.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, at least me.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I get to work for Hello Sunshine, which is Reese
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Witherspoon's media company, and it's a value driven company, and
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I drank the kool aid, Like I feel
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: lit up. But I think that's a rare experience today.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I think that you're right. At the same time,
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: you and other young people are really looking for purpose.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: And I will say Coach has a workforce of gen
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Z and millennials who really believe in the brand and
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: love the product. And one of the joys for me,
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: coincidental with the release of my book, is a Coach
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: in its eighth decade is reaching new heights and sales
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: in a number of customers and the love for the
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: brand is real and it is part of the American landscape.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: Well, you guys had this resurgence a few years ago,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I would say with gen Z there were some new
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: brand ambassadors. What was the strategy behind that.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: I will say that this was a strategy that Todd
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: the CEO and Stewart On the chief creative officer, developed
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: to really focus on strengthening coaches relevance for the new
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: population coming of age. And the reality is that there
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: are twenty five million girls turning eighteen every year in
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: the countries where Coach has significant business, and that excludes
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: Africa and India. So in the world where Coach is
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: a market leader, twenty five million people are becoming eighteen.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: And if you can capture their heart and their mind
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: at eighteen, there's a good likelihood if you continue to
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: listen to them, anticipate where they're traveling, and be there
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: when they get there, they will be loyal for twenty
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: and thirty and forty years. While they only represent fifteen
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: percent of accessories spend today, that's gen Z. They will
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: represent forty percent in ten and fifteen years. And we
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: all know that parents and older siblings and grandparents of
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: gen Z are influenced by that taste and gen Z
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: they're really focused on values and culture.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, would you consider entrepreneurship with spiritual experience?
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: Absolutely? When I think of that really goes into my
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: magic bucket. You need to have belief, and belief is
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: abstract because you're looking at the future and you're looking
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: at possibilities and they don't exist in real products or
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: services today. But you have a notion that if you
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: build the right product and build or create the right
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: service and it's in tune with the values and interests
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: of the consumers. You're attracting men and women. You can
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: create something special. And I think entrepreneurs, you really need
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: to have belief. And I being old school, I do
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: believe at the heart of a great brand is a
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: great product and that product has images and associations and
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: that's how you one builds a great brand to bring
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: those images and associations to life and storytelling.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: What have you learned about collaboration that you think other
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: leaders get wrong.
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: I consider collaboration really on the logic side and not
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: on the magic side. And the reason I say that
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: is because you need to have a mindset that it
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: takes a village to build something and that you can
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: get the best out of people if you create a
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: learning environment where they will share their thinking and as
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: a community, with thinking of antithetical ways to approach things,
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: align on a path and take that path. And extreme
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: collaboration is a way of life.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Coach, you talk about it more than most people. That's
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: why I was curious.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: Well, I do believe in collaboration in the same way
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: I believe in separation of powers and checks and balances.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: You get the best out of people who are connected
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: to the business, whether they're part of the supply chain,
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: they're doing customer service, working in stores, designers and so forth.
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: And getting a team aligned and finding the right way
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: for people to express themselves and giving them the right
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: opportunities to grow can best occur through a collaborative environment.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Now everything fortunately is automated in the digital age, and
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: the software that shows the entire world within the company
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: what's going on, and that's very helpful in connecting the dots.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: I had an interesting conversation the other day. There was
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: a businessman who died, and people were saying, wow, look
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: at what he created and look at the success. And
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: I'd known his family personally, and I said, I don't
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: know if I think that was a successful life. His
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: daughter is struggling because I think he wasn't around and
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: didn't instill a lot of confidence in her. I don't
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: know that he spoke to people kindly. We were having
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: a debate on what success is because I guess in
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: some ways maybe I was being judgmental because success to
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: me looked different than what it did to these people.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about what success is for you, how do
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: you look at it.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: When I think of success, I think of life's journey.
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: I don't think of the endpoint. I think I think
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: of purpose and relationships. And when I say purpose, it's
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: being motivated to do something that you have belief in,
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: and belief is very important purpose. And when I think
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: of relationships, I think of authenticity and I think of genuineness.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: And I do believe in life's journey. Those of us
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: who are able to live above a Maslow's hierarchy, above
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: the place where we pay just pay our bills. My
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: parents worked so that I could live the American and dream.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: They work really hard to pay the rent and to
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: put food on the table, like so many of our grandparents,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: that great grandparents, and those of us who have the
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: opportunity to go to college and to dream and to
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: actually live a more purposeful life beyond just shelter and
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: food and clothing need to really be thinking about on
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: moments in life. So I do believe special moments are
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: important because and I think the more special moments one has,
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: the more memories and the more growth we have.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: When you say special moments, do you mean weddings, celebrations,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: or do you mean creating special moments every week or
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: every day.
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: When I think of special moments, it's something that is
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: out of the ordinary that you will remember for a
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: long period of time. I mean, it could, for me,
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: be a visit to the San Juan store and coach,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: where I saw four generations in the store at the
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: same time. It was my only specific situation. There was
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: a great grandparent, a grandparent, a parent, and this seventeen
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: year old great granddaughter. They were all carrying coach and
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: they were buying coach. And that was a moment for me. Now,
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: that was a work moment. Personal moments are at least
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: as important, and you need to navigate your life so
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: that you can enjoy both simultaneously. In hindsight, I wish
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: I had more. I smell the roses more on the
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: way up, and people have asked me, what would you
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: do differently? And I'm not sure that I would have
• 51:50
  Speaker 3: been able to do too much differently because it was
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: so demanding twenty four to seven on. When you're building
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: something that has hot, it's hard to let go.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: I think about that because most highly successful people I interview,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: their reflection is I should have stopped and smelled the
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: roses along the way, but I'm not sure it's possible.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: Well, see, for me, I tended to compartmentalize to smell
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: the roses on weekends, on scheduled vacations. But even on
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: the weekends scheduled vacations, so many of us, not just CEOs,
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: but leaders at all levels were preoccupied with the problems
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: that we left on Friday. And I encourage people to
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: really do a good job compartmentalizing, and I talk about
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: compartmentalization a lot of my book on these are things
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: I learned over the decades.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: Did your kids understand? Did your wife understand? The demand?
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Was that tenuous?
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: Was that tenuous? There were moments where it was tenuous
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: in the sense that I would be away longer than
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: on perhaps I should have been because I would be traveling,
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: and there was a lot more efficient if I was
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: traveling to the other side of the world to stay
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: there and not come back for a Saturday or Sunday.
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: But my family did understand and were very supportive and
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: continue to be.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: You dedicate the book actually to your parents, who you
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: say always believed in you. There I quote this in
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: the podcast a lot, but there's a book I love
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: this woman interviewed successful people and the one common denominator
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: was that they had a parent, usually a mother, who
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: believed in them.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, and my mother certainly believed in me. And I
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: tell a story in the bag Man that I remember
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: like it was yet yesterday, and in fact, when we
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: were celebrating my mother's life after her passing, I shared
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: this story with family and friends, and it occurred when
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: I was in the ninth grade. I went to a
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: junior high school in the Bronx Boys and Girls Public School,
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: and I had a guidance counselor by the name of
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: mister Schmother, and I remember the yes Schmuttor. I remember
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: exactly what he was wearing the day I went into
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: his little office with my mother and he was sitting
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: behind his desk. He had two chairs and he had
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: some paper, and he looked at me and my mother
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: and he said that he thought I should go to
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: a vocational high school. And he went on to say
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: he thought I should go to the High School of
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: New York High School of Printing, because printing was becoming
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: a very major industry. And my mother looked at him
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: and said, my son's going to college, and stood up
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: and said Lewis were out of here, and I sat
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: there a little bit bewildered because he was authority, and
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: my mother stood up and I sheepishly left afterwards. But
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: I knew when I left the room I was going
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: to college.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful story.
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: And my mother, I will say, when I no one
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: understood me. She painsteaked. When I was five and six
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: and four, She painstakingly worked with me to help me
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: pronounce more letters correctly, or to compensate by finding synonyms
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: that wouldn't have this sticky combination the letters that would
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: come out like garbage when I would say.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: It, when you think about that belief, because it must
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: have been really important for you to say that in
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: the dedication.
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: Yes, my parents, like so many of our parents, were
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: very filial oriented. They lived their lives so that their
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: children could have a better life. And while my parents
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: were not immigrants, their parents came to the US just
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: a handful of years before they were born, so English
• 56:22
  Speaker 3: was not spoken regularly in the home when they were
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: growing up. And I do believe the best of America
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: is our diversity, is the notion that we are a
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: motivated group of people that come from anywhere in the world.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: And I will also say whenever I traveled to other
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: parts of the world, whether it was in the eighties
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: of the oughts, regardless of whether who was president and
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: whether the country leadership was popular, everyone knew someone who
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: was living the American dream. And they all talked proudly
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: of New York City and the energy and the grit.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Going back to a word, and I do think on
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: that the best of us, best of America is because
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: we are a melting pot.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: You have, over the course of your career, met with
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: and know closely some really great leaders in your experience,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: what makes a great leader?
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: What are the key mix of ingredients?
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: Interestingly, as you asked the question, I gravitate to political leaders,
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: not business leaders. And I think of Winston Churchill one
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: of my favorites, because he was a person of real
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: belief and purpose and he knew that England would not
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: fall to Nazism, and that unswerving belief and that courage
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: resonated with the British people and it was miraculous how
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: they held their line. I also think of great presidents
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: like Obama and Clinton who cared about people. I think
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: having empathy is a key requirement for a great leader.
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: There can be leaders who are autocrats, and there were
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: leaders who can conquer the world, but if they don't
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: care for people, it's hard for me to consider them great.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: You said you coach people pun intended this time. What
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: do you see young leaders struggling with.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: Many different things. I think one is how they make
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: sense of their place in the world and how they
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: define success and ambivalence towards putting in the amount of
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: effort that's required and leading a more balanced life. And
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: I think that's a struggle that they need to be
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: conscious of because we're only here one time. So when
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: I talk about enjoying life's journey, I encourage people to
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: search within themselves what really gives them fulfillment, what really
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: drives them, and they should really and to the extent
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: their value driven. And I've not seen a generation more
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: value driven than Gen Z other than my generation the sixties.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: They are driven by a feeling of purpose. They are
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: they are concerned with the climate, They are concerned with sustainability,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: war and peace, diversity, and I think that they're carrying
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: a lot on their shoulders in a highly fluid world.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: It's moving so quickly at warp speed so I struggling
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: with priorities where to spend their time. When I came
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: of age, and when people went to work, and where
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: they were thirty years old, eight years out of college,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 3: say they generally had one job or one point five
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: jobs on average. Now it's six or seven jobs. It's
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: remarkable when I look at a resume and for a
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: thirty five or forty year old and they had twelve gigs.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: And when I probe, why haven't you stayed around longer? One?
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 3: Fortunately they were able to find other things, so they
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: were living at a higher level than just focusing on
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: shelter and clothing, but also because they weren't feeling fulfilled.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: It's fulfillment is a holistic sense, and today young people
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: are looking for that in disproportionate ways to their parents
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: and grandparents.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: What's something you wish young people knew about building something
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: that lasts?
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: That when we say building something that last, it's really
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: first belief in what you're doing. Second is building a
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: team of like minded people and creating an environment where
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: they can thrive and feel purpose and be rewarded appropriately
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: along the journey.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Well said, if some rapid fire questions, right, Okay, is
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: there something that you think is a common threat between
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: successful people, relentlessness. What's one trait you see in every
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: great leader.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: You've met, empathy?
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: Who did you think of when I asked that question.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: I actually thought of Bill Clinton, and I thought of Obama.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What's the smartest decision you've ever made?
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: Joining coach?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: One thing that everybody should try.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: Once recreational drugs.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: What's a book you've read that changed your life, something
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: that everybody should read.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Stranger in This Strange Land by Robert Heinlen, written in
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: nineteen sixty one.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: And what's something that you wish people could see about
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: you that they don't see at first glance.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: There isn't anything that comes to mind. I believe that
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: I am who I am, and I project that from
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: the first moments that I'm there earnestness.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: Yes, lou, thank you for your time.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: I've enjoyed this thoroughly.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: I appreciate that me too. Okay, you know what time
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: it is. Today's a good day to have a good day.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: I'll see you next week.